At the early part of the Second World War,
1939, '40, '41, a lot of brilliant British engineers and manufacturers were coming
up with their own ideas to win the war. One of the ideas that was put forward
was from Sir Geoffrey de Havilland. Now a bomber stereotypically is a big
aeroplane that carries bombs, obviously it needs a defence - machine guns in the front of
the back - but we were losing young lads in Bomber Command very very fast indeed. So Geoffrey
de Havilland had a very big blue sky think. He decided he was going to make a
bomber but he was going to make it completely unarmed. The defence of
this bomber was going to be its speed. Mr de Havilland made some
ideas, put some drawings down, and sent them off to the government. The
government had a look at him but like so many other designs at the time Mosquito - as was going
to be the name - was chosen to be discontinued. Mr de Havilland was not happy. He had his
manufacturers, had his own factory, had his own workers, and he wasn't short of a bob or two.
So he decided to go ahead with his own project, he believed in his idea. Now everybody
at this time was handing in metal - pots, pans, railings, and gate posts to get melted
down to turn into airplanes like Spitfires. But Sir Geoffrey de Havilland had his idea
that he would make his aeroplane out of wood. Construction was of wood and this
was revolutionary for first-class British aircraft. But wood was chosen for
three main reasons: for quick production, to use fresh material supplies,
and to employ a new group of labor. Wood construction also gave this plane more
buoyancy in the event of coming down on water. And in place of the clang of metal is the sound
of carpentry, in place of sparks there's sawdust. Nothing strange about a wooden aeroplane a long
time ago, but this is the Second World War, we're in modern times. If this airplane is going to go
up against a German fighter like the Messerschmidt 109, a lethal aeroplane, the wood is going to
have to be very streamlined and very strong. He started experimenting with very thin layers
of veneer, some balsa wood, pressing them down with some fish-based glue over some upside down
jigs or books, looking like an upside down boat. He pressed them over and moulded them down,
popped them off, and he had two semi-circles, put the two semi-circles together you have
one long tube or fuselage if you will. Just enough room for one pilot, his navigator
and a lot of bombs. He'd got a fuselage. He decided to try the same with wings but
of course if this airplane is going to be fast you need powerful engines, it's going to be
manoeuvrable to get away from the German fighters. Sticking to the wings, not one but two 27 litre
V12 Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, and two as you can see of the biggest propellers he could
possibly fit on the little wooden airplane. If you follow the trajectory of the propellers
down you can see only just misses the nose of the airplane. And the little wooden
bomber ends up with 3,000 horsepower. It rapidly went into production and they
rearranged the production shops to enable as many Mosquitoes to be built as possible, and
that resulted in there being four production lines and the various parts the shelves of the fuselage
and the wing boxes were brought together from other sites, mostly from places where there had
been furniture manufacturers. And at the peak, one aeroplane would emerge from each line each
day - that was the scale of production that was was achieved, because it was wartime
and things were sort of desperate. Thousands of men whose peacetime job was
making beds and chairs are now workers in aircraft production. Thousands of women too are
working all out on the world's fastest warplane. Now if you were learning to fly in the war
time and you were moving on to Bomber Command, you would need a twin rating. Obviously flying an
aeroplane with two engines to get the twin rating you might learn to fly in the Airspeed Oxford,
which we also have here at Imperial War Museum Duxford, or the Avro Anson down on the floor,
aeroplanes that are quite old-fashioned built, covered in Irish linen, room for two or
three guys, perhaps a couple of machine guns, and with total power output of less than 600
horsepower. The mosquito had 3,000 horsepower, slick down the fuselage, no pop rivets,
no screws, completely aerodynamic. A prototype was made - W4050 - and one or two
other prototypes were sent here to Duxford, to the air fighting development unit outside of
the south side of Hangar Three. Nothing new about a new aeroplane showing up outside on the grass
for Duxford for testing: a little twin-engine bomber. But this aeroplane - no armament?
The test pilots were scratching their heads. Reading a few of the pilot's notes as best they
could they took off to test the Mosquito as it became known. Not only did the test pilots come
back with a wry smile because not only was it the fastest bomber they had ever flown, it was
the fastest aeroplane they had ever known. And in fact I had the privilege of being asked by
the Chief of the Air Staff then to go and fly the prototype Mosquito. I think it was February
1941 and i was in fact only the third pilot ever to fly a Mosquito. So i was happy to fly the
aircraft and overjoyed at its high performance. Do you remember that occasion? Yes
very well indeed because it was so much higher performance than the Beaufighters,
which was a outstanding war machine, and the Mosquito was a real joy to fly and of
course subsequently proved so to so many pilots. So eventually they said let's test this thing
against our best, let's test it against a Spitfire. The contemporary Spitfire in 1941
was a Mark V Spitfire. A Mark V Spitfire was tested against a Mosquito to see if the Mosquito
could keep up. It was the other way around. At no altitude could a Mark V Spitfire stay with
a Mosquito. The Mosquito was put into service with flying colours. The first Mosquitoes off the
production line were going into Bomber Command and with a slightly extended bomb bay as you can see
ours has a slightly extended bomb bay a little bit of a fat bit at the bottom of the fuselage,
that Mosquito could carry the same average bomb load as a B-17 Flying Fortress. A B-17 obviously
carrying 13 very heavily armed machine guns 10 very braving American lads. A Mosquito, little
aeroplane made out of wood was carrying its pilot, its navigator and could carry a 4,000 pound bomb
load. Initially the Mosquito had the lowest loss rate of any aeroplane in bomber command such
was its performance, even without armament. What was it about the Mosquito that lent itself
particularly? Well it could do anything - it could carry a four thousand pound bomb we used to carry
four or five hundred pounds. We had drop tanks we could we could fly for six and a half nearly seven
hours. So we had quite a good range and speed, if we wanted to put it on we could go faster
than most of their fighters, anyway they'd have to come down from a height and in the dark they
couldn't see us to that extent. And being wood their radar detection didn't find us very easily
because there was no reflection back from it it was you know. It was a sort of aircraft
that you you felt perfectly confident in and you thought if you were master of all
and nothing could could touch you you know. So Sir Geoffrey de Havilland and the design
team decided to say well if it's that fast let's try it with some guns in the nose,
let's see if it doesn't slow it down much. So, in the nose they placed four 303 British
machine guns, Browning machine guns, but a 303 round is not as powerful as the
American 50 caliber a 303 bullet is about less than half the size of a 50 cal about the
size of the end of a little finger so as well as that to give the Mosquito a little bit more sting
they also put four 20 millimeter Hispano cannons underneath its chin. A fair bit of firepower
that Mosquito became the fighter bomber. The FB6 and was found that it only actually slowed the
Mosquito down by about 15 knots, so in effect even the slowest Mosquito was still doing 380 miles
an hour with that amount of sting at the front. Now obviously not painted like ours is, i'll
explain that in a minute, the Mosquitoes that went onto Fighter Command and Fighter Bombers
and intruder units with the machine guns and the cannons in the nose were painted sort of
blue grey underneath like a dolphin and with grey and green camouflage on the top. Painted and
armed thus off to Fighter Bomber Command and also into intruder units, Mosquitoes waged war on
the Gestapo attacking Gestapo HQs everywhere, all over Europe in Copenhagen Mosquitoes attacked
the Gestapo HQ, flying literally as our Mosquito is portrayed about 30 feet from the ground,
below the rooftops, and down the streets, throwing bombs quite literally straight through
the front door of the Gestapo HQs. Mosquito pilots loved their aeroplanes nothing really
could catch them. Unfortunately in late 1941 an aeroplane had come about called the Focke Wolf
190, invented by a gentleman called Kurt Tank and at medium altitude a Focke Wolf could
catch a Mosquito and became its nemesis. But in fact even fitted with the with the 21
Merlin engines the Mosquito at high level was still very fast it was as fast as a Spitfire with
comparable engines and therefore 190 interceptions were by no means inevitable, but if they if
they did take place you were pretty well for it. However Mosquitoes still were very
very uncatchable aeroplanes until the advent of the Messerschmidt 262
Jet. Mosquitoes were the first MRCA, multi-role combat aircraft. They could be turned
to anything and excelled at everything. They did later on armed with a huge cannon underneath its
chin, a six-pound cannon firing a trajectory about that big, against anti-shipping, firing
one round every other second. Also armed with rockets just underneath its wings also
for anti-shipping. Mosquitoes without any armament at all and painted sky blue went into
photo reconnaissance units, flying up to 35 000 feet and well over 400 miles an hour obviously
very uninterceptable at that height and speed. There were 7,781 mosquitoes made between
1940 and 1950, but they ended their career painted like this as a target tug from 1950 to
1962 dragging around along windsock so early cold war jets like F-86 Sabres, Meteors, Vampires
and Hunters could fire at it for target practice. But I prefer to remember the
Mosquito painted like a dolphin, armed to the teeth screaming down streets
and scaring the life out of the Gestapo. thank you for watching this imperial war museum
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